درخت حوزه‌های تخصصی

This paper is an attempt to fill the gap in the literature by presenting a language policy formulated according to the idea of constitutional patriotism that overcomes the charge of ineffectiveness. I will argue that the procedural character of constitutional patriotism and its emphasis on the practice of law-making is best suited to allow for a pragmatic answer to the questions of language policy-making in multicultural societies. Unlike the instrumental and intrinsic arguments, the pragmatic approach views language as the matrix of communication where the goal of engaged citizens is mutual understanding. The pragmatic approach is also more effective because unlike the principled approaches, which tend to homogenize the composition of diverse societies, it constrained by (1) values of political culture of the society; (2.a) historical contingencies such as the founding role of national minorities; and (2.b) practical feasibilities such as size, vitality and concentration of linguistic populations. <br />In recent years the normative status of minority rights as a species of human rights has been widely discussed by political theorists. In this context, the issue of minority language rights is one of the most hotly contested topics in the prevailing debate over the claims of culture. Mainstream political theories approach this topic differently, depending on their view of an appropriate model of political association. Liberal egalitarians emphasize the significance of the liberal ideals of neutrality and autonomy in deciding appropriate language policy, while liberal culturalists focus on the constitutive role of language and culture for the individual’s exercise of rights and liberties that translate into a language policy that ranges from recognitions and accommodation to maintenance and protection of group identity and language.

A person’s identity is their sense of who and what they are, of who stands in significant relations to them, and of what is valuable to them. This is inevitably very broad, an immediate implication of which is that the concept of identity taken alone cannot do significant normative work. In some cases a person’s identity is bound up with the evil that they do or wish to do, and cannot thereby give them any right to do it. In other cases very powerful elements of a person’s identity – such as their attachment to loved ones – is certainly related to important rights, but it is not entirely clear that one needs the concept of identity to explicate or justify these rights; the deep involvement of their identity is arguably a byproduct of other important values in these cases (such as love), and those values can do the grounding work of the rights by themselves and more simply and clearly. <br />Nevertheless, when suitably qualified, a person’s identity is central to accounting for important political rights. These ranges from rights to participate in cultural practices of one’s group, which sometimes implies duties on governments to support minorities threatened with extinction, to – at the outer limit – rights to arrange political administration. <br />These rights are connected to both autonomy and fairness. Cultural rights are often taken either to be opposed to autonomy, or at best instrumental to personal autonomy (by providing ‘options’), but in fact, the ideal of autonomy, expressed by Mill as being the author of one’s life, requires that one be in control of significant aspects of one’s identity. Significant aspects of one’s identity are collectively determined within a culture. Cultures are not static, and their development is particularly affected by political boundaries. A fundamental right of autonomy implies, therefore, that groups be allowed, within reasonable constraints of general feasibility and stability, to arrange political boundaries to enhance their control over their identity. This shows the fundamental link between individual and collective ‘self-determination’. The right of collective self-determination is also based on fairness, since cultural majorities in existing states enjoy advantages that minorities frequently lack. <br />Spelling out the basis of identitarian rights in autonomy contributes to determining both the upper and lower limits of this and other rights of universal scope. First, it is important to distinguish between two senses of ‘human right’. The first sense is a right that a person has simply in virtue of being a person, or simply by being a human being. A second sense is a right of cosmopolitan scope. Every right in the first sense is a right in the second sense but not vice versa. That is, every right that people have merely in virtue of being people is a right that everyone has. But not every right that everyone has (and should have) is a right that they have merely in virtue of being a human or a person. Some rights that everyone has or should have today people could not have had in the past because institutional, economic, technological or other prerequisites were lacking. Some that everyone has today they may not have in the future because other values will have superseded them in a different institutional, economic, or technological setting.